Payola: thought this was a thing of the past ...

Apparently not.  In the past few years, RadioOne and ClearChannel both paid fines for taking pay-for-play.

Late last week, Spanish language Univision signed a $1,000,000 consent decree to resolve all allegations that “Univision radio stations or their employees secretly accepted payment from a record label in exchange for the radio stations giving more frequent airplay to the label’s artists.”

From Radio-Info.com:

In other words, Univision ran afoul of the FCC’s Sponsor ID rule about disclosing such arrangements. Across town, the Department of Justice has “accepted the plea of Univision Services to charges filed by the DOJ based on the same facts.” Neither agency identifies names in the consent decree, but the problems apparently started inside the now-sold-off Univision record label.

The FCC and the DOJ coordinated both their investigations and their enforcement actions. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says “Payola – the idea of pay-for-play – misleads the listening public.“ Univision agrees to abide by the rules regarding airplay for "cash or other items of value”, to limit the gifts, concert tickets and other items Univision staffers can accept from labels. And it agrees to appoint a Compliance Officer and regional “compliance contracts.”

Read the FCC’s press release about the $1 million settlement here. Importantly, the consent decree says that Univision remains fit to be a licensee, as you can read here.

Read Jerry DelColliano's thoughts on payola.

Mike's experience:

I worked a lot of smaller markets and never had offers to play songs that went beyond the occasional lunch, steak dinner, concert tickets or promotional product giveaways.  None of those ever made me change my mind about my playlist.  I never got rich (or even spoiled) by playing a song in St. Joseph-Benton Harbor MI or Oshkosh WI.

It never occurred to me that such support went past "friendship" between the record promo guy and the radio programmer and the support of the company once the music was being played in the market.  Call me naive.

Then my stations in somewhat larger markets began to be tracked by and reported to Billboard Magazine and Radio & Records, both of which are defunct music trades.  But back then, the numbers in their charts were the shizzle.  When I became a full-fledged reporter to both of them, the pressure set in.

I got weekly calls from format and regional record promoters suggesting that all stations in my format and at my P-level were geared up to add a certain record in a certain week.  Presumably I'd comply (as would other stations in my format and level) and the record would march up the charts according to a predetermined route.

I played the game and moved the songs along, as long as the national charts showed growth. And then the calls from the uber-promoters started coming in, the guys and gals at the top levels of the record companies, the folks who had the money and the clout to really move the tunes to the top.

As a Billboard and as an R&R reporter, I apparently had some clout, too.  Because the promo monkeys started showing up with gifts, like private jets to California for me and my family, week-long vacations at Disneyland, free hotels and meals, drugs, whores and, well, what else is there besides cold, hard cash?

And that was at my little stations.  I started hanging up on the uber-promo-types and I found that my clout was rapidly being diminished.  I wouldn't play the game, and so they wouldn't let me play the game.

Frankly, just as glad to be out of it.  My final turn was with RCA Records and the Oak Ridge Boys.  I didn't move their song to a Power category as desired (WIL had screwed me out of a concert presentation) and as a result it never made #1 on the charts.

There's a certain irony that my radio career ended at about the same time that I denied the Oak Ridge Boys their final #1, considering that my country music career essentially began when I introduced the Oaks on stage at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg VA the week that Elvira went #1 and that the group was being managed at the time by Sheldon Davis, who went on to own and manage...KIX104 in St. Louis!

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